Imagine Commerce 2015 – Interview with Magento Pioneer Award Winner Marius Strajeru

Marius Strajeru : “are one of the best Magento developers today”…again this is subjective. There is no solid evidence about this.  :-).

I decided I wanted to be a developer in my 4th year at the Faculty of Computer Science in Iasi, Romania. Until then I didn’t see myself writing code (I admit I barely passed my C++ and JAVA exams), but my C# lab teacher really made less theoretical and more practical. And most important he made it fun. I had to work on projects like simulating a football championship, and audio player, an “ms-paint” like software and others. He made me consider a career as a developer.

Later I hit a new turning point in my life. It was July 2008; It was on the first day at a new job. I have applied as a developer for an add-server application, but one of the PM’s told me “You are not going to do that. We have an e-shop we must build. Do you know Magento?” Me: “No what’s that?” PM: “It’s an e-commerce platform. Nobody here knows how to develop on that but we made an analysis and it fits best the client’s needs. Good luck.” I ended up working for 2+ years (on and off) for a project that started on Magento CE 1.0 and when I left it, it was on EE 1.9 during which I had the unfortunate and fortunate to do a lot of small and big mistakes and learn from them.

I don’t know exactly when the frustration ended and the passion started.

Brainvire : Share with us your entire journey right from the initial few years till today, when you are one of the most renowned Magento developers across the world. What were the ups and downs of the years?

Marius Strajeru : I’ve been in the “work field” for about 9 years now. Damn, they passed too fast. My mother didn’t let me work during college years, so my main focus then was school. This had its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are obvious, but the disadvantage was that when I finished college, I didn’t have any real experience. So I started with a low paying job where someone trained me, then slowly switched 2 other jobs to improve my resume and my salary. In 2008 I ended up at Anais Software, a Belgium company where I did my first Magento project. I described just above my first day at work there. I was really lucky because at first they didn’t put any pressure on me; they gave me 1 month to learn Magento. In this month I didn’t have to produce anything, just learn. So I had time to screw things up and fix them again. I discovered the Magento forum in my first few days, that kind of lacked content and I saw it as an opportunity to share what I learn as I go along. I guess after the first 100 posts on the forum I became addicted.
In 2012 I switched jobs again and got to work and lead a team for more than year on a huge Magento project (for the biggest retailer in Romania). This helped me increase my skills in Magento development and gain some skills in team leading.

Then, in 2013 magento.stackexchange.com came along. And fake internet points can be a good incentive :). So I slowly moved my activity to SE but continued to do what I’ve done for years.

Since 2013 I’ve been working for a different company, where I rarely do Magento projects, but my addiction to SE kept me in touch with Magento.

That’s about it.